The Falcons of Fire and Ice (27 page)

Off the Coast of Iceland Isabela

Frist-frast –
a pigeon’s wing used to stroke birds of prey. Stroking with the bare or gloved hands removes the natural oils from the falcon’s feathers and her feathers become soaked if it rains.

I am lying in a shallow pit. A searing pain, worse than I have ever known in my life, is burning through my chest. I can’t move. I’m too terrified even to try. I want to gasp for air, but I have to make my breathing as shallow as I can. I must make the men think I am dead. If they do they will go away. My baby is crying. But I can’t go to him. I can’t reach him to comfort him. They tore him out of my arms and I was powerless to stop them.

My baby’s cries cease and I know they have silenced him. None of my children are crying now. Perhaps they too are simply holding their breath until the men have gone away. They can’t be dead. Please don’t let them be dead! Even these murderers would not slaughter innocent children. I lie staring up into the darkness, listening to the wind wailing among the trees, waiting, biting back the pain.

The men have not gone. I can hear their breathing above me, hard and rough. I lie rigid, trying to stop myself doubling up as the pain surges back through me. Something heavy falls into my lap. I will myself not to move. Great clods of earth are raining down on my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms, my face. They are burying me in a grave, but I am still alive. I try to scream. But no sound comes. I push and push, trying to force the air from my lungs, but I cannot make a sound. I fight with every splinter of strength I have left.

My own scream woke me, and for a few minutes I lay trembling on my pallet, until the sound of the waves crashing against the timbers and the rolling of the floor convinced me I was safe in our quarters under the forecastle of the ship. Nightmares had haunted my sleep ever since we’d left France. I couldn’t seem to shake them off and I had no idea what they meant. Were they a bad omen?

I shivered in the biting cold and huddled deeper under the blankets. Since the departure of Dona Flávia and her husband in England, I had taken myself into the far corner of the passengers’ quarters, the spot once occupied by Dona Flávia, to try to find some shelter from the icy wind that flooded through the anchor holes. As we drew further north from the isles they call the Shetlands, the seas had grown stormier and the wind so bitter that I could no longer bear to be upon the deck. The boards were constantly slippery with rain, and the ship tossed so much that I was afraid of falling and hurting myself again.

The bruises I had received in France had all but vanished and my knee was healing well, but the slightest awkward movement sent a sharp pain flashing up my leg which often made me cry out before I could stop myself. One of the sailors, a kindly man, had fashioned me a crutch so that I could take the weight from my leg. But I was praying desperately for my knee to heal by the time we reached Iceland. How was I going to capture the birds if I couldn’t even walk far enough to find them?

Marcos, Vítor and Fausto had each come to me in turn, murmuring that they would gladly carry me to wherever I wanted to go on the ship, but I refused to allow them to carry me anywhere. All three of them made me uneasy. I almost longed for the return of Dona Flávia to shield me from their attentions, though her manner had grown colder to me after that night on the beach. Perhaps it was the way that Marcos the physician was constantly fussing round me, and not attending to her own imagined illnesses, but several times I heard her pass some remark loud enough for me to hear about wanton young girls and sluts, as if she thought me one of them. She never asked me what had happened in the forest. No one did, as if to do so would mean having to explain why they abandoned us on that shore.

I was relieved they didn’t ask. For I didn’t understand the events of that night myself, much less feel able to give an account of it to others. I could still hear that shriek in my head and I often woke in panic, thinking myself back in among those graves, until I realized where I was, and knew that the moan I could hear was only the wind in the rigging.

When I had fled that clearing, the shriek seemed to pursue me, as if something was rushing towards me in the wind, tearing after me like a kestrel stooping down on a mouse. Perhaps it was a hunting animal I’d heard, a vixen, even an owl, though none I know could have made that sound. Maybe it was just the wind shrieking in the branches. I’d once heard the wind whistling through a mountain cave and sounding almost human. But could I really have been that foolish as to flee from nothing more sinister than the wind?

But as I ran I’d been more concerned with looking back over my shoulder than with where I was going, until with a sickening jolt I found myself stepping into thin air. There was nothing I could do to stop myself falling. I landed at the bottom of a great steep-sided gulley. Dried leaves had formed a thick layer over the soil. But there were rocks sticking out of the leaf mould and it was against these that I hit my shoulder and in the same instant felt a searing pain as my knee twisted under me when I crumpled to the ground.

Stunned by the fall, I curled myself up into a ball and lay there whimpering, clasping my knee and fighting for my breath. For a few moments the pain in my leg was so all-consuming that I couldn’t think of anything else. If whatever it was I had heard in the forest was still shrieking somewhere, shock and agony blocked it out of my head. Then, as the full white-hot intensity of the pain began to subside a little, I heard a rustling of dead leaves and the sound of something slithering towards me. Some creature was scrambling down the slope into the pit. Still cradling my knee, I whipped my head around and saw the dark figure of a man standing behind me. In his hand was a thick branch. The figure raised the lump of wood high above my head, ready to strike down hard. I think I must have screamed. I covered my head with my arms, cowering away. I braced myself for the blow, but it did not fall.

After a few moments I glanced up, though I was afraid to lower my arms. The stick was still raised above me, frozen in the air, as if the man was debating whether or not to bludgeon me. Instinctively I hauled myself backwards by my arms, dragging my injured knee through the carpet of leaves, knowing even as I did so that retreat was useless. He only had to take a few quick steps to catch up with me and strike. But he didn’t move. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. He slowly lowered the branch and pushed back his hood, though it was still too dark to recognize him.

‘Isabela, are you hurt?’

He advanced a few paces and I shrank back, for he was still gripping the branch firmly in his hand.

‘It’s me, Vítor. I came to look for you. When you didn’t return to the cottage, I was concerned. I thought you might be lost or hurt.’

‘How … how did you find me?’

He made no answer but instead fell to his knees and, laying down the branch, reached for my injured leg. The gesture startled me and I jerked my leg away from him, a movement which sent waves of pain flashing up my body.

‘Your knee, have you cut it? Let me see.’

Reluctantly I held my leg still, but the moment his fingers felt it, though the touch was light, I gasped with pain and pushed his hand away.

‘I think you may have dislocated it,’ Vítor said. ‘But I don’t have the skill to straighten it. You need a bone-setter. We’ll have to get you back to the cottage.’

For the first time I became aware of my surroundings. The gulley I had fallen into was narrow but long, shaped like the hull of a ship. The sides were steep and though in the darkness I could scarcely make out the top, I could see from the protruding tangle of roots above me that even if I could stand up, the top of the gulley would be a good two or three feet above my head.

Vítor rose and took another pace towards me. I cringed and grabbed the branch he had discarded, prepared to defend myself as best I could, but he stepped over me and felt his way along the gulley.

‘The sides are much less steep at this end and not so high,’ he called back. ‘This is our best way out.’

I heard his shoes scuffing through the leaves as he returned. Then without warning he slipped his arm around my back and I felt the fingers of his other hand sliding under my legs.

‘Don’t touch me!’ I swung the branch at him.

He leapt back and held up his hands as if to show me he meant no harm. ‘Forgive me, Isabela, I was only trying to lift you up. I’ll have to carry you. You can’t walk.’

I stared up at him. Just minutes before he had been standing over me with a branch preparing to smash my skull open. Now he was offering to carry me?

‘Get away from me. I can walk and I will!’ I dug the end of the branch into the ground and tried to lever myself up. He proffered his hand which I ignored. But though I leaned heavily on the branch I couldn’t manage to raise myself more than a few inches before I sank back down on to the leaves again. He offered his hand once more and this time I was forced to take it. I managed to drag myself to the end of the gulley, using the branch and his arm to steady me. But though the wall of the gulley was indeed less steep there, the top was still level with the top of my head and there was no way that I was going to be able to scramble over it.

As we stared at the bank the rain began to fall. Hard, heavy drops falling fast and furiously. Desperately I reached up to pull myself out, but found myself holding only a handful of slippery wet leaves. I groped through the leaf mould, trying to feel for a tree root that I could use to haul myself up, but I could grasp nothing solid except chunks of earth which came away in my hand. The rain was blinding me and I was on the verge of tears from pain and desperation.

Vítor grasped my wrist as I scrabbled frantically through the sodden leaves.

‘It’s no use trying in this rain. We may as well stay here until it’s light. Then I can find a way to heave you out. At least it’s sheltered from the wind down here.’

He swung me up in his arms and by this time I was too weak to resist. Every step he took jolted my knee and sent stabs of pain shooting through me so violently they exploded in white lights in my eyes. I allowed him to carry me back to the higher end of the hollow. There he set me down gently against the side of the gulley, removing his own cloak and wrapping it round me, though it was already soaked through. He scraped piles of wet leaves over my lap and legs to keep out the cold, before settling down to sit beside me. The rain beat down upon us. I knew I should offer to wrap the cloak around the two of us, but I couldn’t bear for him to touch me for I was in too much pain, and besides, I still didn’t trust him.

‘It was foolish to wander so far from the cottage and the beach,’ he said.

It was too dark to see the expression on his face, but I could hear the accusation in his voice. He blamed me for us both being out here. How dare he?

‘No one asked you to follow me. I could have found my way back. I wasn’t lost until that shriek startled me.’

‘Shriek? What shriek?’

‘You must have heard it. Anyway, you didn’t answer the question I asked you before. How did you find me?’

‘I heard something crashing through the bushes and I followed the sound.’

‘Rather foolish thing to do, wasn’t it? It might have been a wild boar.’

He snorted. ‘I can tell the difference between two legs running and four.’

I was still firmly grasping the branch. I lifted it a few inches. ‘And exactly what did you intend to use this for?’

The answer came swiftly. ‘Firewood. What else would I want to do with an old branch?’

It was obvious when he said it. He’d told everyone in the cottage he was going to find wood. Why should I doubt for a moment that’s what he’d been doing? And yet I still couldn’t throw off that image of him standing over me.

‘But when you climbed down in the gulley, you had the branch raised as if …’

I didn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t want to say what I feared aloud, as if the words, once uttered, would make it true.

‘As if I was defending myself?’ he finished. ‘Of course I was. It was dark. I could see something moving at the bottom of the gulley. And couldn’t be sure it was you. It might’ve been some wild beast.’

But I didn’t believe him. He had held that branch raised above my head long after he must have realized that it was me. Besides, only an idiot would climb down into a pit if they really thought there might be a savage animal trapped in it, and I had a feeling Vítor was no fool.

We spoke little more that night. He seemed to be lost in thought and I was consumed with pain. I huddled into the sodden cloak and as I pulled it tighter around me, my fingers brushed something hard on my chest, caught in the wool of my shawl. I grasped it and even without looking I knew what it was – the small white finger bone, encircled by the iron ring. On the top of the ring was a flat disc, and I could feel the faint lines of some letter or mark etched into it like the mark of a seal.

I felt like a thief. I should not have picked it up. To steal from the dead was almost worse than stealing from the living. I should take the bone back, return it to the grave and bury it once more, but even if I could have found the place again, I couldn’t walk there. The last thing I wanted to do was keep it, but I couldn’t just cast the bone away as if it was rubbish. What I held in my hand was part of a human being, a person, someone who had lived and been loved. It would be sacrilege to throw it away. The image rose up in my head of the girl at the
auto-da-fé
sobbing as she was driven to place the box of bones on the pyre, of her refusing to relinquish her grip on the box and them beating her until they had forced her to let go. I shuddered, and not simply from the chill of the icy rain.

I fumbled for the little leather bag I wore around my waist and pushed the bone and ring inside. I had no idea what I would do with them, but perhaps I could rebury them in the next graveyard I came across or lay them in the crypt of a church where they would be safe.